Ohio Sues Over Missing Electronic Votes

dstates writes "The Columbus Post Dispatch reports that the State of Ohio is suing Premier Election Systems (previously known as Diebold) over malfunctions in electronic voting machines. Election workers found that votes were 'dropped' in at least 11 counties when memory cards were uploaded to computer servers. The same voting machines are used nationwide. The company blames a conflict between their software and antivirus software for the problem and says that an advisory was issued on the subject. The Ohio lawsuit contends that the company made false representations and failed to live up to contractual obligations and seeks punitive damages."

Re:Punitive Damages

[Ardipithecus]

As a matter of fact Ohio gave the election to Bush. There were numerous other irregularities.

Re:Punitive Damages

[CrimsonAvenger]

f these machines affected the outcome of the election, perhaps it is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.

Didn't RTFA, I see. The machines in question were delivered in the last year, and the only elections they've affected were purely local ones.

And they didn't even affect them, since the miscounts were noticed and corrected from the paper audit trail built into the system.

Re:Punitive Damages

[fugue]

Shooting them is barbaric. The People prefer Madame la Guillotine.

Re:Antivirus software

[NitroWolf]

It's like they're allergic to using actual professional-grade tools. I'd suppose deliberate incompetence, but tell me this first: do they use those tools on their ATMs, when there's actual money at stake?

No. They use OS/2 (seriously) on many legacy machines and the software is very custom. Is it any good? Well, probably not... But you'll never know, because you can't ever, ever, EVER see the code. It's kept very secure.

If you ever get the pleasure of booting an ATM machine, look for the nice OS/2 logo splash screen. :)

Re:Treason

[civilizedINTENSITY]

"you'll just live in your fantasy world where election fraud is a Republican problem"

Voter Fraud Charges Out West GOP Group Under Investigation In Oregon; Similar Charges In Nevada: 'Officials in Oregon have launched a criminal investigation after receiving numerous complaints that a Republican-affiliated group was destroying registration forms filed by Democratic voters statewide'

Karl Rove's big election-fraud hoax Republican manipulation of the polls long predates the U.S. attorneys plot:'At least part of the U.S. attorneys plot seems to derive from the "election fraud" hoax that Republicans are trying to perpetrate in order to gain control of the country's voter lists.' '...leaflets in African-American neighborhoods warning that voters must pay outstanding traffic tickets before voting; the calls in Virginia in 2006 from the mythical "Virginia Election Commission" warning voters they would be arrested if they showed up at the polls...'

Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted:

'something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)'

For those who would say, "But that was way back then, we got away with that crime (hehehe)", in recent news this is only now coming to a head:
lead attorney for the plaintiffs in the case of King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell, announced that he is filing a motion to "lift the stay in the case [and] proceed with targeted discovery in order to help protect the integrity of the 2008 election." This is only beginning to surface.

So, in terms of your "fantasy" comment, please wake up and smell the coffee. This isn't your standard, small scale "oops" sort of behavior. This is historically unprecedented, and apparently federally orchestrated. This has the potential to make Watergate look as mild as Watergate made Blowjob-gate look.

Re:Punitive Damages

[PopeRatzo]

I'm hoping that this issue does not become partisan.

You have got to be kidding me. You do understand that the CEO of the company that makes the voting machines has given his assurance, in public, to do everything he can to help the Republican Party. You do understand that in the last 3 election cycles, the Republican party has done everything it can to limit the number of voters registered and actually prevented voters from casting their ballot. They've gone so far as to use robocalling to tell voters that the polling place address has changed, or that people will lose their government assistance if they show up to vote, or that there will warrant checks on everyone voting. They tell US Citizens of Hispanic descent that their citizenship status may be reviewed if they show up at the polling place. All of these things have been documented.

In Florida, 150,000 new voter registrations were "lost" by the Republican secretary of state. There are instance after instance of examples of the Republicans doing everything in their power to screw up our electoral system. Go read about the lawsuit of the State of California vs. Diebold. And where all of those games have failed, they are not above simply fucking with the machines, in the dark of night, when no Democratic or Independent election judges are present (see the 2004 Georgia Gubernatorial election where 4 hours after the poll closed, the Democrat had a commanding lead, and somehow, after midnight, with only the GOP election commissioner present, an additional 60,000 Republican votes were "found" in the voting machines. Go read about Florida, 2000.

This issue is partisan as hell, because today's Republican party knows that their only chance at winning is to game the system. They are as hostile to democracy as any tinpot dictator.

I have gotten spam emails about how Barack Obama is responsible, personally for killing some 30-plus people (some of those names are on a similar list attributed to Bill Clinton's homicidal hand). I have gotten emails about how Barack Obama is a secret muslim who was actually born in Indonesia (or Kenya, or Nigeria, or Malaysia). I have gotten emails about how Barack Obama is the motherfucking antichrist.

Now tell me about how you're "hoping this issue does not become partisan".

I'm not questioning your sincerity, LaskoVortex, but your awareness of the state and integrity of one of our political parties seems to come up a bit short. Believe me, there are worse things in a democratic nation that "partisanship".

Re:Punitive Damages

[Sparky McGruff]

It's not a bug, it's a feature. [rollingstone.com]

Re:End to End

[Anonymous Coward]

Try that with 10x more people. Electronic voting with a paper receipt is the best solution I have heard so far.

Try that with 3x more people on top of that, and you'll catch up to India's pen and paper capability.

Re:Punitive Damages

[Maestro485]

If the crime leads to the GOP leadership it automatically becomes partisan. I mean, Pelosi has publicly stated that the Democrats will not try to impeach Bush, who is unequivocally a criminal as far as the law is concerned, and that is not even counting his extra-legal Iraq invasion.

Not that I think it should be partisan, or even agree with that mindset. That's just the way American politics plays.

Stealing America

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

A good movie which deals in part with some of the shenanigans that go on in Ohio is Stealing America : Vote by Vote [stealingam...emovie.org] by Dorothy Fadiman.

Re:Punitive Damages

[rohan972]

Ron Paul's strategy is interesting (even if you don't find his policies and ideology so), infiltrate, influence and take over one of the popular two. I'll be interested to see how it works out over then next 10-15 years, as it was obvious from quite early on that he didn't really mean to win the presidency but to pack the republican party with libertarians.

Re:Punitive Damages

[TheRaven64]

Disclaimer: I'm not an American, but I've studied US politics (although not for quite a few years).

The original idea of the president was twofold. He was meant to act as a check on the power of congress - having a veto meant he could prevent populist legislation passing. Fear of 'tyranny of the majority' was a large influence on the design of the Federal Government. The president was not directly elected; each state would send some representatives to D.C. every few years and they would select a president. Similarly, the Senate was nominated by the state legislatures, not directly elected.

The other role of the president was to represent the states in international relations. The individual states were weak and having a single figure who could collectively bargain on behalf of all of them made the US a much stronger power internationally (very important when you consider the recent history of wars of independence with Europe that various parts of the New World had just finished).

The president was not intended to have any domestic power, and on the international front he had the power to propose treaties but they would only be ratified if they had a two-thirds majority in the Senate. This meant that the office of the president had very little power. It was only in times of war (when he acted as commander in chief of the armed forces) that he had more power, and only congress could declare war.

After reading this post, you may find it difficult to find any connection between what I've said and the way in which the government of the USA actually works. A full description of where everything went wrong would be at least a chapter in a book, if not a complete book.